Anti-Syrian rivals battle at ballot box

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With this ballot a Lebanese bride, accompanied by her groom,
casts her vote in Baabda in the third round of voting in national
elections.Photo: Reuters

The last time General Michel Aoun and the now-imprisoned
Christian warlord Samir Geagea faced each other, in 1990, more than
600 people were killed and more than 2000 wounded in one of the
climactic battles of Lebanon's long civil war.

On Sunday they faced off on campaign posters in this town 15
kilometres south-east of Beirut and all over the central Mount
Lebanon region - the steep, lush hills overlooking the
Mediterranean - in the critical third phase of parliamentary
elections that are being held region by region on four successive
Sundays.

"Our leader, Dr Geagea, he's an innocent person," said a worker
at the Lebanese Forces' tent.

Dr Geagea was, in fact, implicated in many of the bloodiest
incidents of the war, including assassinations of fellow
Christians, but is the only warlord who remains in prison.

The election worker only give his name only as Joseph, saying he
feared General Aoun's possible connection to the Lebanese
intelligence services and, hence, Syria.

Across the street, the orange-shirted campaigners for General
Aoun were no less adamant.

"It's been 15 years we've been waiting for this change, and it's
finally going to happen," said Fares Fayad, 30. "We're very
optimistic. So far, so good."

The general had returned in triumph after the assassination of
the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February caused a popular
revolt that forced Syrian troops to withdraw. But, with clear
ambitions for the presidency, he quickly fell out with the new
opposition led by Walid Jumblatt, the Druse chieftain, and Saad
Hariri, the former prime minister's son and a Sunni Muslim.

Nearly half the 128-seat Parliament was elected yesterday, with
34 Christian seats and 24 Muslim seats in the evenly divided body
at issue in the central mountains and the eastern Bekaa region.
Unofficial final results showed that Aoun-backed candidates won 15
of 16 seats, Reuters reported.

The vote threatens to split the nascent political coalition
against Syrian influence, and also the Christian community. That
rivalry led to the drawing up of two competing lists for the 11
parliamentary seats in the Baabda-Aley district - allocated to five
Maronites, three Druse, two Shiites and one Greek Orthodox.

The list drawn up by Mr Jumblatt - whose seat was assured in his
neighbouring Shuf Mountain stronghold - was an unlikely alliance
that included old civil-war enemies. Among them were the Lebanese
Forces, the main Christian militia once led by Dr Geagea; another
Christian faction, of former president Amin Gemayel; an anti-Syrian
group backed by the Maronite patriarch Nasrullah Sfeir; and
Hezbollah, which has an eye on the two Shiite seats.

The result on Sunday was a bizarre political display in a
district where many villages still bear the shell marks of the
battles among Syrians, Christians and Muslims. But on Sunday,
once-mortal enemies engaged in a jostling but mild political
rivalry that either heralded a new sense of Lebanese unity or
perhaps the entrenched stubbornness of religious rivalries.

Election workers for General Aoun sat in a tent across the
street from those in white T-shirts from the Lebanese Forces, one
of whose symbols resembles a dagger.

The United Nations envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen,
met President Bashar al-Assad, of Syria, for two hours in Damascus
on Sunday before the arrival of a team that is to verify that
Syria's forces have completely left Lebanon.

Syria's ambassador to the US, Imad Moustapha, attacked
accusations by the Bush Administration that Syria had not fully
withdrawn its intelligence agents from Lebanon.

"This is untrue. This is just as credible as the story of Iraq's
WMDs before the war," Mr Moustapha told CNN.